While embarking on my ritual of talking back to the news recently, it struck me: many of the people we celebrate today didn’t do very well in the polls of their own time.
The truth is, we often mislabel conviction as extremism when it confronts our comfort. In their own day, figures like Martin Luther King Jr. and Paul the Apostle were widely misunderstood. They were criticized, resisted—sometimes even feared. Decades or centuries later, we don’t call it disruption anymore. We call it legacy.
In an age when social media makes it effortless to spotlight the best or worst of any moment, we label people, groups, and movements just as easily. What’s harder—and far more necessary—is the quiet work of listening long enough to discover the truth. That gap between reaction and understanding is where discernment either lives—or dies.
Have you ever paused long enough to realize that a buzzword has become so common we’ve forgotten its meaning—or the impact that once gave it buzzword status? Prejudice is one of those words. It didn’t start as a slogan—it started as a description. At its core, prejudice simply means deciding before knowing.
I was in a meeting with policy makers recently, discussing some promising—but difficult—options. At one point, the guy next to me leaned over and whispered, “Your gift of being quiet is really shining on this stuff.”
It was meant as a mild jest, but I took it as a compliment. There were many options, twice as many opinions, and the best path forward could only be found if every perspective was understood first.
One day, we’ll all be gone. Our names forgotten by most—but what we embraced will remain tied to them for those who remember. That’s the idea of legacy: living today for the things that outlive us.
History has a way of judging noisy moments once quiet wisdom becomes visible. The people we honor most weren’t always the loudest voices in the room. More often, they were the ones who listened long enough to understand what truly mattered.
Discernment doesn’t demand immediate conclusions. It calls for patience, humility, and the courage to withhold judgment until truth has time to surface. And more often than not, that quiet work is what becomes legacy.